UK politics

Not cycling, but still important.

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Greg
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Re: UK politics

Post by Greg » 4 years ago

I considered joining up in order to get a vote until I realised it wont make feck all difference.
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Re: UK politics

Post by JohnToo » 4 years ago

Greg wrote:
4 years ago
I considered joining up in order to get a vote until I realised it wont make feck all difference.
...because you don't think your vote will make a difference to who the leader ends up being, or because you don't think that who the leader is will make any difference to the next few years of UK politics?
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Greg
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Re: UK politics

Post by Greg » 4 years ago

JohnToo wrote:
4 years ago
...because you don't think your vote will make a difference to who the leader ends up being, or because you don't think that who the leader is will make any difference to the next few years of UK politics?
The latter. Its very depressing.
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Mister Paul
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Re: UK politics

Post by Mister Paul » 4 years ago

We have to start somewhere.

I like Jess Phillips but I don't know whether she's a very good local MP and lacking the skills to be party leader.

I think Kier Starmer may be the best option to try to start some change.
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Re: UK politics

Post by Greg » 4 years ago

Mister Paul wrote:
4 years ago
We have to start somewhere.

I like Jess Phillips but I don't know whether she's a very good local MP and lacking the skills to be party leader.

I think Kier Starmer may be the best option to try to start some change.
The small part of me that still gives a toss, agrees.
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Re: UK politics

Post by Regulator » 4 years ago

Mister Paul wrote:
4 years ago
We have to start somewhere.

I like Jess Phillips but I don't know whether she's a very good local MP and lacking the skills to be party leader.

I think Kier Starmer may be the best option to try to start some change.
Jess Phillips appears to be somewhat racist and transphobic...
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Re: UK politics

Post by Joan » 4 years ago

"Somewhat racist"? Sounds like an improvement on our current pm, at least.
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Mister Paul
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Re: UK politics

Post by Mister Paul » 4 years ago

Regulator wrote:
4 years ago
Jess Phillips appears to be somewhat racist and transphobic...
Where's that? My boy did say to me yesterday that some of her old tweets were interesting, but I've not seen them.
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Re: UK politics

Post by Regulator » 4 years ago

Mister Paul wrote:
4 years ago
Where's that? My boy did say to me yesterday that some of her old tweets were interesting, but I've not seen them.
She made sweeping generalisations about Pakistanis in her constituency and, when challenged, made a complaint against the person who challenged her. She's also taken digs at Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler...

She supports TERFs and groups like Womans Place.

I'm afraid the more I dig behind her media persona, the less likable she becomes.
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Re: UK politics

Post by JohnToo » 4 years ago

Regulator wrote:
4 years ago
She made sweeping generalisations about Pakistanis in her constituency and, when challenged, made a complaint against the person who challenged her. She's also taken digs at Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler...

She supports TERFs and groups like Womans Place.

I'm afraid the more I dig behind her media persona, the less likable she becomes.
I would be described by some as edging in the TERF direction, and what small bits of Phillips' utterances on feminist issues I have read quite appealed to me.

But I agree that Labour needs a leader not a media personality or a controverialist.

I've actually been quite impressed by the ability of several of the candidates to articulate a vision. In my mind, that is a pleasant contrast to the last two leadership elections, in each of which Corbyn seemed like pretty much the only person able to do that.
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Re: UK politics

Post by ransos » 4 years ago

I too like Keir Starmer, but then I'm a city-dwelling, Remain supporting middle-class man. I have serious concerns about his ability to reach beyond his natural constituency and reclaim the seats across the north that Labour will need in order to return to power.

I have a lot of time for Angela Rayner and think it's a real pity she's not standing.

As for Jess Phillips, going by her media appearances and the excerpts I've read from her book, lead me to conclude that she would be a disaster. I struggle to see more to her than a loudmouth dispensing fortune-cookie wisdom.

I suppose that was a long way of saying that I don't know who I will vote for.
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Re: UK politics

Post by Regulator » 4 years ago

Apparently Corbyn should be strung up because he pointed out that, if we want to be the ‘good guys’, we need to follow the rules we’re supposedly holding others to:

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Re: UK politics

Post by Iris » 4 years ago

Greg wrote:
4 years ago
The latter. Its very depressing.
I think you're wrong. There is no way that Johnson can get through the next 5 years without betraying someone like he betrayed the DUP. He's an incompetent nincompoop. Look at his past record - a chaotic fiasco as Foreign Secretary and a complete disaster as Mayor of London. The only reason he won his second term was because Labour fucked up and put up Livingstone against him, someone who should have been put out to grass many years before.

All Labour need to do is have someone as their leader who looks like a Prime Minister in waiting and who can lead an effective and united opposition rather than someone who leads a fan club for the small proportion of the population who are party members. The united forces of the non-Tories only need to take about 40 or 50 seats to be in a position to have a rainbow coalition after the next election.

There's only one person who can possibly do that, and it's the one candidate that the Tories fear - Keir Starmer. Any other outcome of the leadership election will condemn Labour and the country to 10 more years of harm, and would probably spell the well-deserved end of the Labour party as a major force in politics.

Not only has he managed, somehow, to survive the backstabbing and factional Corbyn era despite clearly not being a Corbynite, he's done so without apparently making large numbers of enemies. So he'll be able to pull together a shadow cabinet based on talent rather than on factional interest. He's got the forensic mind Labour needs to attack Johnson, without the baggage of major detailed ideology - his ideology appears to be that the UK needs a Labour government which can make people's lives better rather than an ideology based on specific sacred cow policies. And, importantly, he's got substantial experience successfully leading a large organisation - which is vanishingly rare amongst politicians but which shouldn't be underestimated.

Of the other candidates, Phillips is impressive but clearly not ready for leadership - she'll make a very decent shadow Home Secretary. Lewis was saying some interesting things before he withdrew, and I can see him as a shadow leader of the House or shadown minister for consititutional reform. Nandy has been more substantial than I expected, but has no profile at all outside of Labour geeks. I feel sorry for Thornberry, who's an impressive, experienced politician and who was the heir apparent only a couple of years ago - until, for obscure reasons she was cold-shouldered by the cabal around Corbyn.

As for Long-Bailey, she's the candidate the Tories are hoping for. She's a non-entity (the articles launching and relaunching her candidacy were utterly vacuous) who, like Corbyn, is being used by Milne, McCluskey and Lansmann to advance the utterly bizarre idea that Labour is a pressure group not a potential government. Anyone who gives Corbyn - the man who destroyed the Labour party and enabled what will probably be a very hard Brexit - 10/10 should by that measure be banished. And being "nominated" by the very odd Momentum party-within-a-party via a complete farce of a travesty of democracy will, I hope, rule her out for the large majority of Labour members who aren't Momentumites - as well as, I suspect, for the overwhelming majority of Momentumites who declined to back her.

The deputy leadership race looks like it will end up with Rayner winning. She and the new leader need to define her role properly - one of many things that Corbyn failed to do. Rayner could make quite an effective link back to the Labour Party in the country.
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Re: UK politics

Post by Iris » 2 years ago

That last post hasn't aged well, has it? I'm not going to get back into that particular discussion just yet.

In the meantime, here's what FPTP politics and opposition infighting does for you. My local town council has just swung from strictly non-political (they were all Conservatives - a bonus point for recognising the reference) to 8 LDs and 7 Tories. In the meantime, the new unitary authority we're part of has elected 113 Tories and 34 others. Quite why a sleepy commuter county needs 147 councillors I really don't know, but what really makes me fed up with politics as it's currently instituted is that we have 9 councillors representing wards which overlap with the town. And all of them are Tories. Here's a very typical election result, in my own 3-councillor ward.
Capture.JPG
Quite what good it does anyone other than the Conservatives for there to have been 9 non-Conservative candidates I fail to understand.
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Re: UK politics

Post by Iris » 2 years ago

Sometimes things fall the way you're hoping. The last time I voted for an MP as opposed to a loser I also watched Neil Kinnock defeated by John Major winning his first GE. And the last time this part of the country was represented by someone other than a conservative was in the days of the National Coalition in the 1920s - before that it was when Aylesbury was a Rothschild family constituency.

Looking at the numbers, the relentless canvassing successfully hammered home the point that a divided opposition loses - combining that with disaffected liberal Tories (a commuter town is full of them) either switching or staying at home and you have a shock result.
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